About the Course​The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry and the American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommend that children receive their first dental evaluation within the first year of life. In general, there is an increasing trend toward providing dental care to children before the age of three. The reasons for early dental intervention with pregnant women, infants and parents are to determine the risk status based on information from the parents and to perform a risk assessment screening and examination of infants’ mouths. This early care provides an opportunity to educate and inform parents about their children’s oral health. Anticipatory guidance/counseling for children’s dental health is an important part of preventive care, and may be the most effective way to prevent problems that traditional infectious-disease models have failed to address, such as early childhood caries (ECC).

​Course Objectives: 1. Understand why pregnancy provides a unique opportunity to provide oral health interventions for women and their infants. 2. Realize the impact of maternal oral health on the longer-term oral disease status in families. 3. Know the background and clinical evidence in support of perinatal and infant oral care. 4. Be able to perform a caries risk assessment through the use of the CAMBRA tool for 0-5 and clinical exam results in a private practice or in a community based clinical environment. 5. Identify the dental products available for patient interventions and develop a treatment care path to manage dental caries for any patient based upon CAMBRA risk assessment protocols. 6. Understand the benefits and challenges in creating buy-in from dental team members, and the influence of third party payers on patient acceptance. 7. Learn to examine, diagnose, and treat very young children using an Infant Oral Care model 8. Comprehend the barriers to access in care for lower income families, Deliver perinatal and infant/toddler oral health prevention and education, and 9. Be able to offer dental practitioners information on a dental practice model in working with the youngest population of pediatric patients and to gain more in depth pediatric dental experience